Posts Tagged ‘Double Fine Productions’

Gang Beasts, even in pre-release form, is one of the best games I’ve played this year. It’s a multiplayer brawling game, with elements of Dreamcast classic Powerstone in among the wrestling and clumsy acrobatics. Whether you’re struggling to roll a momentarily unconscious foe out of a ferris wheel carriage, or stumbling headfirst into a meat grinder, Gang Beasts is a wonderful combination of applied skill and improvised farce. The next update, which will coincide with a Steam Early Access launch, places the game under the Double Fine umbrella. Details below.

When Double Fine announced during E3 that they were remastering Grim Fandango for release on PlayStations, they carefully hemmed and hawed around saying it’ll be coming to PC too. “Talk about other platforms soon!” Tim Schafer cried, saying something very enthusiastic about working with Sony before leaping out a window and running for the hills. But obviously it will, right? Of course it will. Today Double Fine announced they’ll release their jazzed-up version of the lovely LucasArts adventure game for PC, Mac and Linux alongside the Sonybox versions.

Also in ‘hey, PS4, get orf moi land‘ news, it seems Sony’s latest under-telly monolith has managed to hoover up a surprise remastered version of beautifully bittersweet, death-themed adventure game Grim Fandango. No fair – so many of us PC types have been desperately wailing for these last ten years or so. The last great LucasArts game would enormously benefit from some modern spit’n’polish, especially to see its wonderful, weird scenes looking sharp and clear on our big, high res screens. To think that we may be denied it on our PCs is heartbreaking.

Fortunately, I spotted an update from Tim Schafer on the matter, clarifying that PS4 won’t be the only platform, when I was only halfway through necking that bottle of bleach, so perhaps I’ll be out of hospital in time to play the strongly-implied PC version.Read the rest of this entry »

The first thing that happens in Hack ‘N’ Slash is the player is given a weapon, a sword, and then it breaks. Beneath the sword’s external stabby part is a USB interface. A smarter person would point out how this is a microcosm of the game, because you solve puzzles by peeling away the game’s outer layer to manipulate the code beneath the surface. Me? I’ll just lazily use it as a way of introducing the concept and then hop into the game proper. Oh, and I’ll also say it’s great.

As a Zelda-y action-adventure game, Double Fine’s Hack ‘n’ Slash is impossible to complete. Obstacles are impassable, enemies are unkillable, and puzzles are unsolvable. That’s fine though because oh ho ho, Hack ‘n’ Slash is really a code-hacking puzzle game which happens to be wearing Zelda-green jimjams. Almost a month after its oddly premature launch trailer, Hack ‘n’ is now on Steam Early Access at £14.99.

Last Life is an exceedingly promising looking cyberpunk noir adventure game being published by Double Fine. As is often the case with these things, you’re solving a murder. As is significantly less often the case with these things, it’s your own. The game’s utopian, dystopian, MarsTopian future posits that humans have figured out how to 3D print new bodies, thus making The End significantly less… final. It’s an interesting conceit for a mystery plot, but it turns out that the rabbit hole runs much deeper for creator Sam Farmer. An abiding love for transhumanism practically bleeds out of him, and there’s a very good reason for this: he’s been struggling with a chronic disease for most of his life. His health issues are always right behind him, lunging to drag him down, hold him back. But this life doesn’t offer do-overs, so he’s done holding back.

You might remember that we liked sleepy-as-the-night, sharp-as-a-knife adventure Kentucky Route Zero quite a lot. We even gave it game of the year, doncha know. So when Last Life creator Sam Farmer told me his game was best described as “Kentucky Route Zero in space,” I nearly warbled with glee. The noir-themed tale of a detective trying to solve the mystery of his own murder has Double Fine‘s blessing and backing, and it’s taking to Kickstarter for one more boost. I sat down with Farmer for what turned out to be his first interview ever, and we discussed Last Life’s universe and story, Sherlock-style inspection mechanics, Double Fine’s involvement, what it means to be “noir,” and transhumanism. It’s all below.

It’s official: goats are taking over gaming. Between Goat Simulator, Escape Goat 2, and not really anything else, there’s no escaping it. They’re everywhere, by which I mean in more than zero places. But in Escape Goat especially, the bearded beasts of burden appear to be far more than a conduit for cheap laughs. Magical Time Bean’s goatroidvania sequel looks downright lavish, with strong systems underpinning attractive visuals and, you know, goats. There’s a launch trailer in the trap (and goat) ridden labyrinths below.

Each Monday, Chris Livingston visits an early access game and reports back with stories about whatever he finds inside. This week, space station simulation in Spacebase DF-9.

It’s been a rough week for my little space station. We were boarded by a squad of Kill Bots who, as you might expect, tried to kill all non-bots. A massive fire in the life support chamber nearly knocked out the oxygen supply. Now, an alien parasite has appeared, and even though my security chief easily killed it, I’m left to wonder how the bug even got aboard. Perhaps it burrowed in through that hole in the hull? The one my security chief was just sucked out of to his death? That’s probably how.Read the rest of this entry »

From the distant, waterlogged land of Bath Spa, John Walker sits at a keyboard and dreams of another world. A world by the sea. A world where 95% of its male population are bearded and wear Converse. Untold distances away, in said sea-neighbouring world of Brighton, Alec Meer also sits at a keyboard and imagines a tourist-besieged town made up of yellow buildings and fading magazine publishers.

Somehow, the two writers’ minds reach each other across the gulf of space and time. And they have something they must discuss: Double Fine’s Kickstarted revivalist adventure game, Broken Age, whose first ‘Act’ was released last week. They talk of its two lead characters, they talk of its unfinished nature, they talk of its puzzles, they talk of what they wanted but what they got, they talk of shrunken heads and peaches. Read the rest of this entry »

Amnesia Fortnight is two weeks every year during which Double Fine allow their entire staff to pitch and make game prototypes, with the goal of eventually expanding a few of those games, and maybe turning some into a full retail release. It’s the process through which Costume Quest and Stacking were born; it was opened to public voting and documenting last year, birthing Spacebase; and it’s now back for another while around.

As per last year, that means you can buy your way into the process via a pay-what-you-want Humble page. That let’s you vote on which of the 31 prototypes get developed (including 4 by Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward), and perhaps most excitingly lets you watch the 2 Player documentaries of the entire process.

I’ve embedded Double Fine’s introductory video a few of the best pitch videos and trailers for a couple of games below.Read the rest of this entry »

HARK, A TWIST. Once upon a time, Double Fine’s Kickstarter-fueled adventure Broken Age had all the money in the world. Not a single couch cushion abyss was left un-mined, nor a piggy bank kept from the slaughter. But here’s the thing: apparently that wasn’t quite enough. Broken Age is, in effect, on track to go broke. In a new Kickstarter update, Tim Schafer explained: “Even though we received much more money from our Kickstarter than we, or anybody anticipated, that didn’t stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money.” Another Kickstarter, however, is out of the question, so Double Fine’s doing the next best thing: Steam Early Access.

It’s not actually called Host Harder, but it should have been, right? All I’m saying is Double Fine, if you want to pay me thousands of dollars to spend my days writing lazy comedic subtitles based on the names of 80s action movies, you know where I am. Call me. Any time. Any time at all. Wait, I had to step out for a minute – you didn’t call while I was away, did you? Call again now. I’m right here. Right by the phone. Waiting.